A switch from general taxation to carbon-use taxation may be a positive sum game globally but a negative sum game nationally.

These are not simple zero-sum transfers from one individual to another: they are negative-sum transfers, because illicit activities themselves can cause economic damage, such as discouraging investment and undercutting legitimate economic activities.

Proposal: “Multilateral rules should be established for contending with the two basic problems of coordination that negotiations of this type entail: the possibility that some creditors (and, eventually, debtors) will resist participating in solutions (the free rider problem), and the slow pace of the process or repeated negotiations, generating high costs for debtors and creditors (`negative sum game').

First, the key resources that command high prices and thusproduce wealth are not fixed, like land, but are variable: theskills of craft workers and engineers, the energy and experience ofentrepreneurs, and machines and buildings are all things that canbe multiplied. As a result, high prices for scarce resources leadnot to zero- or negative-sum political games of transfer but topositive-sum economic games of training more craft workers andengineers, mentoring more entrepreneurs and managers, and investingin more machines and buildings.